Piecemeal: a meal in components, in contributions, beans and salads in pots, burgers and dogs in buns. All the assembled stuffs, all my assembled people. And after dinner, after porch-sitting, after the packing up and sending everyone home, a first walk out into the near-dark with only a sleeveless dress on: the walking low and long, hard to the ground at my heels, frogs whirbling in the woods.

Then a blink, a prick of greeny yellow, another, another. Enough to stop me cold at the side of the road to be sure I was actually seeing what I was seeing: the summer's second sky, not-stars flicking again again again in the trees: the year's first fireflies, so soon.